Friday, January 18, 2008

Racy images of bared bottoms are providing the best clues yet as to how we weigh up options. When four male experimental subjects were found peeking at explicit images of naked female bottoms on laboratory computer screens you might have expected disciplinary action.But Dr Michael Platt and colleagues at Duke University, North Carolina, actually encouraged the voyeurs to keep looking.They set up a pay-per-view system and even tried bribing them to look at less desirable images - all the while monitoring their sleazy viewing habits in the name of science.Those bared rumps belonged to female macaque monkeys - and the males mesmerised by the images were macaques too.And the payments and bribes associated with these slide shows of simian smut were not financial but rewards or forfeiture of fruit juices depending on what they chose to view.Primate soft porn may just help solve one of the central questions about how our brains work – how faced with all the choices we have to make every second of every day we weigh up the options and convert disparate information about them into a common neurobiological currency.The research could even unravel the mysteries of autism, reports New Scientist.Dr Platt and his colleagues initiated the pay-perview system to test how male macaques reacted to images of faces and bottoms – two things the researchers were convinced would capture their attention.Four macaques learned to look at a screen with two targets. Looking at one earned them some juice, the other earned them less juice but also a glimpse of an image of a bottom or a face.The researchers have also tried their pay-per-view experiments with humans.(read more)